Harold Martin Groves, noted economist and University of Wisconsin professor (1927-1968), was born in Lodi, Wisconsin, on October 3, 1897, the son of Frank William and Emma Amelia (Herr) Groves. He grew up on a farm in the Lodi area with five brothers and sisters, and attended Lodi High School from 1910 to 1914. From the University of Wisconsin, Groves received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1919 and a master of arts degree in 1920. He attended Harvard University Law School in 1920-1921 and then returned to Wisconsin to teach high school physics at Rice Lake in 1921-1922 and history at Waupun High School from 1922 to 1924. In 1924, Groves began studies at the University of Wisconsin toward a Doctor of Philosophy degree in economics, which he received in 1927. Upon graduation Groves joined the faculty of the Economics Department at Wisconsin and remained at the University until his retirement in May 1968.
From 1932 to 1934, Groves, a member of the Progressive Party, served as Assemblyman from the 1st District in the Wisconsin Legislature. His primary accomplishment was the authorship of a progressive unemployment insurance bill, the first measure of its kind in the United States. In 1932, Groves was appointed state tax commissioner for one year. In this capacity, he assessed the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad and the Green Bay and Western Railroad. Becoming an expert on railway valuation cases, he served, in later years, as a witness at such hearings. In 1934, Groves was elected to the state Senate; he served one term.
From 1939 to 1941, Groves was engaged by the U.S. Treasury Department as chief of staff to study intergovernmental fiscal relations. In 1943, he was employed by the national Committee for Economic Development, composed primarily of prominent businessmen, and published a study, Postwar Taxation and Economic Progress (1946). The study produced hostile reactions from critical newspaper articles and from some of Groves' liberal colleagues in Wisconsin, who felt he was advocating tax exemption for big business. In the late 1940s, Groves began a series of studies in comparative taxation, and traveled to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. He also headed an economic survey for the city of Milwaukee in 1947. In the 1950s, Groves studied income tax administration under a Rockefeller Foundation grant, one of the first of its kind at the University of Wisconsin. Under Governor Gaylord Nelson in 1959, Groves' study of Wisconsin taxation produced what he called his principal “monument and gift to posterity”--the homestead credit for the elderly. Among his other projects was a study of the Wisconsin property tax system in 1958 and several studies on metropolitan finance. Also in 1958, Groves examined employment opportunities among the Oneida Indians and published a report on the subject.
Groves belonged to a number of economic organizations. He was a director on the board of the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1935 until his death and was chairman of the board from 1961 to 1963. Groves was vice president of the American Economic Association in 1947, president of the Midwest Economics Association in 1958-1959, and National Tax Association president in 1964. After World War II, Groves helped revive interest in cooperatives and promoted those on campus such as the women's cooperative rooming house, later named the Groves House, with which the Green Lantern eating co-op was affiliated.
Harold Groves met Frank Lloyd Wright in the early 1930s and was involved in two of Wright's architectural projects. As a member of the Unitarian Society, Groves assisted Wright in arrangements for the building of the Unitarian Church in Madison. In 1953, Wright designed an auditorium and city-county building for Madison known as the Monona Terrace project. Groves' wife, Helen, secretary, and Mary Lescohier, president, of Citizens for Monona Terrace, organized support for the controversial project. After passage of a referendum on the project, Harold Groves was appointed to an auditorium committee.
Groves was the author of a widely-used textbook, Financing Government, published in 1939 and subsequently revised five times. In 1948 he also published a book of readings, Viewpoints in Public Finance. A Brookings Institution-sponsored study, Federal Tax Treatment of the Family, was published in 1964, and “Philosophers and Philosophies of Taxation,” an unpublished manuscript, was edited and prepared by Dr. Donald J. Curran after Groves' death, and published in 1974 under the title Tax Philosophers: Two Hundred Years of Thought in Great Britain and the United States. Groves also published numerous other books and articles stemming from his studies in public finance. His autobiography, “In and Out of the Ivory Tower,” was written in 1969.
During Groves' tenure, the University of Wisconsin granted more doctoral degrees in public finance than any other American university. Among the many of Groves' graduates who became famous in their own right were Walter Heller, chairman of President John F. Kennedy's Council of Economic Advisors; Joseph Pechman of the Brookings Institution[1]; Richard Goode, author and former head of the public finance division of the International Monetary Fund; I. Shuan Sun, deputy governor of the Central Bank of Taiwan; former Congressman Byron Johnson; former Wisconsin tax commissioner John Gronouski, who was also a former U.S. postmaster general and ambassador to Poland; and authors Jesse Burkhead, Harry Kahn, and Milton Taylor.
Harold Groves married Helen Hoopes on July 14, 1930. They had four children: Thomas, Steven, Roderick, and Susan Groves Bement. On his 65th birthday, Groves was named John R. Commons Professor of Economics. In 1963, he made a brief return to politics, running unsuccessfully for 13th ward alderman in Madison, and in 1968 he campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. Groves retired from public life in 1968. He died on December 2, 1969.
